


Blame the Weather

by Louffox



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: End of the World, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Rome, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, and by slice of life i mean missing bits from the months everyone else was doing plane walking, and it's alex's fault that the 'life' is just suffering, blue veins, no beta we die like men, or will be by the end of this fic, so it's slice of suffering, they're basically married don't @ me, will have ed/tjelvar if I can figure out how to work it in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: They were brought together by the weather.But not like songbirds in spring, or salmon fighting their way upriver, or deer on hot summer days. It was the storms, the mystery, the helpless sensation of seeing the world wind and wash itself away, a useless knowledge of a coming doom, drowning rain and driving snow and dry sand. Choking and flooding. They were filthy and wild-eyed and unable to tolerate the presence of another living being, but both flushed from their isolation places by flood and fire.They met soaking and seething, and picked up exactly where they had left off.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	1. The Roof Above Our Heads

**Author's Note:**

> I've written almost exclusive Zolf/Wilde fics for the past -checks watch- several months and the ot9 is entirely to blame, because SOMEONE has to be to blame.
> 
> I didn't intend to post any of this until the entire story was wholly finished, but here we are. I'm hoping to update weekly (but we know how I be). I don't expect this to get smutty or anything. There probably will be violence and gore, nothing especially horrific though. I'm sure you all, as I do, have lots of questions like "????" and "alex why" and also things about dwarves and gods and legs and scars. Some of these may be addressed. Some may not. We're gonna find out together.
> 
> Unbeta'd and mostly written on my phone, so. you know. apologies.

They were brought together by the weather.

But not like songbirds in spring, or salmon fighting their way upriver, or deer on hot summer days. It was the storms, the mystery, the helpless sensation of seeing the world wind and wash itself away, a useless knowledge of a coming doom, drowning rain and driving snow and dry sand. Choking and flooding. They were filthy and wild-eyed and unable to tolerate the presence of another living being, but both flushed from their isolation places by flood and fire.

They met soaking and seething, and picked up exactly where they had left off. Wilde made some joke about Zolf’s grumpiness, and Zolf created water over his head. It made little difference. Zolf already hated himself and Wilde already was half drowned.

“Where’s the old group? The London Rangers, We’re Still Working On The Name?” Zolf asked scathingly, wringing water out of his beard.

“Who?” Wilde said demurely, pulling off his sodden jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. He turned and began dragging the chair over closer to the fire.   
  


“Who?  _ Who? _ ” Zolf spluttered belligerently. “Don’t you just- don’t you-  _ don’t turn your back on me! _ My old mercenary group! The people-"  _ I was in charge of  _ "-you were in charge of!"

“Oh.”

Zolf waited a moment, and then exploded again when it became clear Wilde wasn’t going to say anything else. “ _ What. Happened. _ ”

“Dead.”

Zolf froze, hand still raised to point angrily at him. The anger vanished, and his mouth dropped open slightly in shock. “What?”

“Dead. Or technically missing in action.” Wilde was just standing at the fire, holding the back of the chair, still only showing Zolf his back. He was a blank dark silhouette against the firelight. 

“So- so why do you think they’re dead, if they’re only missing?!”

“Their last known location was Rome.”

Another wave of shock, colder than any downpour. Zolf’s hands dropped to his sides. “Oh.”

He didn’t need anything more. That was settled, then. Wilde wasn’t joking. They had gone to Rome? They were dead.

“Quite. Before they did, though, they were able to unearth- well. I'm carrying on. It hardly matters. You made your stance on all this very clear, so nevermind, I suppose,” Wilde said breezily. Zolf hated how easily he could read him, even just as a blank silhouette backed by the firelight, because he knew what that meant. He could see the invisible wince behind it all, the pain and disappointment and maybe even a little guilt, and he could see it because he understood Wilde.

He didn’t want to understand him. He didn't care to know Wilde so well. He didn’t want to be around him at all. The man was a bastard and a con artist, on top of being flagrantly rude and intentionally tasteless. He was wordy and crude and would never talk about what he should, but waxed poetic about hokum. (But the hatred Zolf felt for him was different from the hatred he had felt for Bertie. To Bertie, his hatred was deep and boiling, lava that simmered under the surface, out of control but luckily buried, at least until something finally stabbed too deep. It was the shake in his hands, the choke in his lungs. To Wilde, his hatred was more like… a current over his skin. Hyperaware and tremulous. He wanted to cover his eyes when he saw the grotesquery of Bertie. But Wilde made him afraid to even blink.)

(It wasn’t worth examining. Hate was hate, it was for good reason, and Wilde himself even seemed to approve of Zolf’s hatred of him.)

(Perhaps he’d spent too long alone after all. He’d become terribly introspective. Puzzling himself in circles, doing a neverending calculation, an eel eating his own tail.)

(Focus, Zolf.)

“I’m not… I’m not totally against helping. I mean. I’m not. That is to say… look, you’re in need of people you can trust and send off to do stuff, and I’m in need of doing stuff. Hey presto, we’ve got ourselves a team.”

“You… want to work together?”

“Yes.”

“You?”

“I- yes.”

“Work… with me?”

“For gods’s sake, Wilde, yes, I want to work with you,” Zolf finally snapped. “The world's all gone to shit, and I need to be doing something. And if I stumbled across you, of all the people left in the world, then I suppose I ought to work with you.”

Wilde blinked at him as Zolf hung his own coat over a chair and kicked his boots off in front of the fire, going round so Wilde wasn't a figure anymore and he could see his face, figure out how big of a mistake his suggestion would be. “Poseidon didn’t send me," Wilde said finally, "though that’s a common mistake to make, believing me to be a god-send-,”

“I’m not with Poseidon anymore. I don’t worship.”

One brow, still glistening with rainwater, raised. “No?”

“Don’t play coy. You knew- no sigils, no marks, no trident,” Zolf scoffed.

Wilde shrugged. “Then how are you walking?”

“Bugger off.”

“I’m serious. How are you upright? Your god was essentially carrying you.”

“Was  _ not _ .”

“He really was. So what happened? Did you officially announce your severance to him, and he just dropped you? Or was it an insidious blasphemous thought, and they slowly dissolved over days? Or-”

“I’m not telling you, Wilde,” Zolf said flatly. “None of your business.”

“But what-”

*snap*

_ *splash* _

\---

They got on like teeth on steel. Zolf wanted to pursue his own leads about the weather, while Wilde wanted to focus on the economic unrest. So they did their own thing, for the most part, but shared a living space, and often compared notes at the end of the day. When Wilde wasn’t being shocking, he was quite intuitive. At first, Zolf was infuriated by his meandering questions and curiosity about seemingly unimportant details, thinking he was simply being obstinate and irritating, but then Wilde showed that these details helped form smaller pictures that could be used to make decent assumptions, paving the way for larger leaps in logic to create other new leads. And he eventually began bouncing his own ideas off Zolf, initially just grumbling about the morons and foolery he encountered, but when Zolf pointed out his own insights, usually based on exotic and random facts he’d learned from his travels at sea or from other sailors, Wilde began asking his opinion, using him as a resource.

This was, of course, how things went on good days. Days they were well fed and dry and able to sleep behind locked doors, with a water glass on the bedside table and a knife under the pillow.

On not-good days they isolated themselves from each other. Some days Zolf couldn’t speak to Wilde or even look at him- whether he’d gotten a fresh wash of horror from the infection and couldn’t shake the fear that he was infected, or Wilde was, and they were just dead men walking, unaware that their expiration date had been written, that nothing they did would matter because they were already gone, already lost, already dead, like everyone else they had ever known, swallowed by the mystery of Rome or the mystery of this infection, and they would never figure it out, nothing could be done or saved or even understood, it was futile, useless, garbage, helpless, they couldn’t- they just couldn’t- there was nothing-

-or whether he’d spent all of his sort of mental and emotional energy for the day, and just needed silence and safety.

Sometimes they didn’t have safety and were forced to hunker down and try to sleep, try and rest up and rejuvenate their spells and recover from their fatigue, despite the immediate and immense danger. 

Sometimes Zolf didn’t leave his room.

Sometimes the bard stayed mute.

Eventually, they encountered Curie and her ilk, and were promptly chucked in a basement for seven days, together. 

By the end of the first day, they had decided to keep to their own sides, and had even scratched a line in the cement floor, to evenly divide the cell.

Day two, they decided they wouldn’t speak, either.

Day three was pleasant, until noon, which marked the end of Wilde's tolerance for silence. By dinner, the guards intervened and made an executive decision for the wellbeing of all parties, and gagged Wilde.

Day four was pleasant again.

Day five. They brought someone into the cell across from theirs. Zolf walked right over to see, and Wilde stayed back, feigning disinterest, but Zolf could see his eyes, squinted to distrusting chips of pale blue that matched the magic laced metal muzzle, flick her way every so often.

It was a woman, with long blonde hair tied back. She was tall and lanky enough to pass as an elf, but her ears didn’t appear pointed, bared as they were with her hair pulled tight to a high ponytail. She was led into the cell and closed in, and stood with her chin lifted.

When she spoke, it was with a low haughty voice, in a language Zolf couldn’t understand. Dutch or German?

“English?” he said, slow and clear.

She frowned, but spoke again. The accent was almost certainly Germanic. “Hello? This is good?”

“Much better, yes,” he said, nodding. “I’m Zolf.”

“Maria Orsitsch.” She said it confidently, as if the name was supposed to mean something to Zolf, and watched him with a small, expectant smile.


	2. Zealot I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some gore so beware!

Day five. They brought someone into the cell across from theirs. Zolf walked right over to see, and Wilde stayed back, feigning disinterest, but Zolf could see his eyes, squinted to distrusting chips of pale blue that matched the magic laced metal muzzle, flick her way every so often.

It was a woman, with long blonde hair tied back. She was tall and lanky enough to pass as an elf, but her ears didn’t appear pointed, bared as they were with her hair pulled tight to a high ponytail. She was led into the cell and closed in, and stood with her chin lifted.

When she spoke, it was with a low haughty voice, in a language Zolf couldn’t understand. Dutch or German?

“English?” he said, slow and clear.

She frowned, but spoke again. The accent was almost certainly germanic. “Hello? This is good?”

“Much better, yes,” he said, nodding. “I’m Zolf.”

“Maria Orsitsch.” She said it confidently, as if the name was supposed to mean something to Zolf, and watched him with a small, expectant smile.

He cleared his throat. “Well. Good. Hello. Do you know what’s going on?”

She blinked, seeming surprised at his question. “Er. I… A bit, yes. I know these people are enduring the plague. I… hmm,” she frowned deeply, as she’d tried to do some gesture- probably magic- as she was talking, and no magic happened. 

“Anti-magic chamber.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“So… did they just capture you, or are you trying to work with them?” he asked, sitting at the bars and making himself comfortable.

“I want to work with them. I believe I have a solution to the plague.”

“What, really?” Zolf said, fighting to quash his excitement. It was probably false hope. It was almost certainly false hope. He was sure it wasn’t worth thinking about.  
(Stop thinking about it.)

She nodded and smiled at him. Her pale skin was bright in the dim cells, and her blonde hair was so light it looked almost metallic. She sat down on the floor of her cell as well, folding herself gracefully like a ballerina.

“I have tapped into a resource. Me and my women. We are a society, and have reached something pure.”

“Something pure? What’s that mean? Like… a purifying potion or something?”

She wagged her head in a strange gesture, and smoothed her ponytail. “Not quite. But it will work.”

“Have you used it before?”

“Yes. I exposed myself to the plague, and I am fine. I am protected.”

Something was starting to feel off. Zolf trusted his gut more these days, since he’d split with Poseidon, and his gut was telling him this woman was… he shouldn’t trust her. Or believe her. Or something. Not malice, exactly, that wasn’t what he was detecting, but… something else. He couldn’t quite hook it.

But if he had a solution…

“So are you going to share this resource with everyone else?” Zolf asked slowly.

“Of course. Once they deign to listen to me.”

Hmm.

“So this isn’t a potion.” Wilde spoke suddenly, startling Zolf. He paced forward, gently twirling the gag from his finger. Zolf scowled at him. “Is it a spell?”

“No.”

“Well. No wonder you didn’t get far with them. You sound like a charlatan.”

“Takes one to know one,” Zolf grumbled under his breath. Wilde gave him a wide smile.

“Obviously. I dabble in con artistry, admittedly, and I can recognize another grifter. Which she is not. Are you?” he said, turning back to her.

“No. I am faithful.”

“You’re a fanatic.”

“I am chosen!”

Zolf’s heart sank. There was no hope coming.

Wilde turned his back on her and paced back to the corner of the cell, dropping the gag at Zolf’s feet as he went.

“I’m sure we’ll want this for her, soon enough.”

“I am pure, protected, and chosen!”

Zolf gave her a flat stare. “And what, pray tell, makes you think that?”

“I have faith.”

“In what?”

She pursed her lips and ran a hand over her ponytail again. He shook his head and shifted so his back was to her.

The next day, she started kicking the bars.

By the time she was put down- poison darts from a small vent in the wall- the foot she was using to kick the bars was barely recognizable as a foot. Just pulpy, pink, wet flesh, blood, bone shards, and flecks of blue. Zolf had taken up residence as far away from her as his cell would allow, hands over his ears to try and block out the sickening sound of wrecked flesh thumping and tearing against the reinforced bars. He had a strong stomach for gore, but there was something so disturbingly unnatural about this.

(That could be me that could be Wilde Sasha Hamid-)

He didn’t actually see the darts.

He flinched spectacularly, then glared pure venom at Wilde, who had put a hand on his shoulder. Wilde only held out a glass of water and mouthed done. He released the pressure on his ears cautiously, then dropped his hands when he registered the silence. Wilde actually pointed out the vents in their own cell, currently closed, that would open to shoot them dead, should they show signs of infection.

A guard came down and gave them large fans, and held a fan herself as more trapdoors poured in oil, and then someone tossed a match on it. They fanned the smoke and miasma away from their own cell, into a chimney that Zolf had just assumed was normal air circulation. He failed to not study his cell and look for scorches.

He saw no burns on their walls, but the crew that came down and scrubbed the cell clean of any oil or residue from the infected woman did a very thorough job.

He and Wilde began communicating again.

“They’re serious. And this is a really good setup,” Wilde said quietly. “They’ve been doing this a lot.”

“We should have something like this,” Zolf said. “Just in case we happen across someone useful.”

“Agreed. Though, on the downside- this clearly indicates they haven’t gotten anywhere on a cure or treatment yet, either.” Zolf nodded- if they could cure it, they wouldn’t need to bother with all this.

“Do we want to work with them?”

“Not really, no. But we could use the resources.”

“They do hate you for being part of the meritocracy,” Zolf reminded him.

“So did you. Times change. We can’t afford to focus on political past or future. We need to focus on the now.”

“True. Then we might have a good chance of making some real progress.”

“They’re used to operating underground- a lot of this was probably already in place from years of undermining and attempting to combat the meritocracy.”

“Attempting? Look around, Wilde, they’ve done an excellent job. And they managed to kill a dragon without anyone knowing.”

“We knew.”

Zolf snorted.

“How are your legs? With this anti-magic chamber, you must be having a real hard time. Probably almost like you just left Poseidon all over again.”

“Sod off,” Zolf snapped, and got to his feet to demonstrate that he was fine. (He wasn’t. His residuums ached and the prosthetics were heavy and graceless without the aid of magic.)

When they were let out, given their final check (Zolf, having spent enough time in close quarters on ships and having been in the navy, was acclimated to treating his body like a thing, and Wilde was… Wilde,) and given audience with Curie, Zolf was sure this would help turn things around.

(Would he continue working with Wilde? Would they go their separate ways, now that they didn’t need to rely on each other and really had no similarities, and shared no goals, no principals, nothing but irritation for the other- why did that thought make Zolf feel hollow inside?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do yourself a favor and google Maria Orsitsch and the Vril society. Thanks to the boys from LPOTL educating me about nazi occultism and her brand of zealotry.


	3. Zealot II

They both presented their findings, meager that they were, and Curie nodded impassively. Zolf had never met her before, but he got a sense that the lines on her face and deep rings under her eyes were a recent development, that this appearance of great age had come all at once, though it did nothing to undermine the steel in her eyes and bearing.

“What’s your progress?” Zolf asked, eager and impatient, once Wilde had finished explaining his own pursuits into seeds, damascus steel, Japan, and Paris.

She opened a file in front of her and slid it across the desk toward them, and set a pen beside it. Zolf leaned forward to read.

This… wasn’t… “What is this?” he asked, confused. He picked it up and squinted at it. He didn’t understand what the paper was talking about- it said something about  _ conceding over _ and  _ desisting from any actions _ and  _ full responsibility _ -

“This is an agreement to hand over the government from the control of the meritocrats and into the control of me and the harlequins, to create a council of-”

Zolf made a loud, involuntary choking noise. “ _ What _ ? I’m sorry, are you- is this serious?”

Curie blinked slowly at him.

“What about your findings?”

“I will not release any information from the harlequins to the meritocracy until an agreement is signed.”

“An- an  _ agreement _ ??! This isn’t an agreement, this is you strongarming us into submission!”

“I think you’ll find we’re not going to be enslaving you or repressing you or anything truly severe. And it’s for the better. You had your chance to rule the world, you had control, and you did fine for a while. But now you’ve failed and it’s time to let someone else try,” she said in a calm, placating voice. Zolf bristled.

“You’re bloomin’  _ insane _ . This is insane! You can’t just- this- are you-,” he stammered, turning to Wilde. The bard had yet to speak, eye narrowed to slivers of ice, and his mouth was pressed into a thin line.

“Curie. Be reasonable.” He spoke slowly and sternly.

“I think you’ll find this very reasonable. No violence, no ill will, a simple cessation of leadership. We will see to it that nobody is harmed in the transition.”

“Transition of what?! There’s barely any leadership at all right now, and if we bicker over who’s driving the cart, we’re going to just crash it and then there will be nothing to control at all!” Zolf cried.

“Then you really ought to sign that.”

“There will be no government! No people to rule!” He had stood at some point and had thrown his hands up in the air, still holding the contract.

“Not if you don’t sign the contract, no.”

“People are dying! Every moment you keep focused on this political agenda, more people die. You claim nonviolence- that claim is false. All the blood of the people who you could’ve helped, if you agreed to just work with us, is on your hands,” he yelled, throwing the folder down on the table and jabbing a finger at her. She lifted her chin defiantly.

“And on yours, for refusing to agree and letting things go on longer.”

Wilde’s face was the picture of quiet fury. “I suppose that’s it then.”

Zolf looked at Curie again, then back at Wilde. “What- are we just going to go away, then? We’re going to die, Curie,” he said in a low voice, disgusted with the entire world. “We’re going to be kicked out to our deaths, and no amount of denial will keep our deaths from soaking your shoes.”

“I won’t kick you out. I’m not cruel.” Here both Wilde and Zolf made noises of irritation. “I’ll allow you access to some resources.

“How thoughtful of you,” Zolf said scathingly. “We don’t need-,”

“We operate on our own. Minimal contact. One teleporter. I continue with my projects, you continue with yours. You allow us some resources, and we help with the gathering of people- give us a setup for a cell, like where you put us, and we quarantine people, then send them along to you. But we get to pick who stays with us.” Wilde listed.

Curie dipped her head. “Fair enough. But I won’t share the results of my projects with you.”

Zolf flexed his hands with useless rage. Here they were, watching the world die, and they weren’t working together. If Curie found a cure, or they found a cure, they wouldn’t share them. Or worse- perhaps both found half the cure, but never pooled their work, so never actually cured anyone. He felt like he was watching them miss the right path, like watching two carts go sprinting past the turn, trying to race each other, unaware they were never even going to get to the finish.

He opened his mouth hotly, not sure what was going to come out, only that it would be loud and angry, but Wilde beat him to it.

“You are aware… the world is ending.”

Curie lifted her chin. “And we will remember your stubborn refusal to give up control, even with the world burning down around you, when we rise from the soot and soil to begin the world anew.”

“This is ridiculous. Let’s work together, c’mon,” Zolf tried, one last time.

“When history looks back on us, it will see who killed the world. It’s you, here, now,” she said flatly.

“You  _ are _ insane,” Wilde snapped, standing so fast that his chair teetered back and nearly tipped over. He produced a sharp whistle from behind bared teeth and the contract to secede hissed and fizzed, melting away to a smoking pile of black, and the splash of acid bit into her desk. Curie nodded her head at it, muttering a few words, and it stopped melting.

Zolf slowly stood, and looked at her. She met his gaze unwaveringly, her eyes steely and challenging. He glanced back at the door, where Wilde had already strode away down the hall.

_ Should we have just signed the paperwork? Is she right? Are we ending the world? Was this the last chance to save it? _

_ This is why I left. There are no right choices. No answers. We're all just blind. There is nothing but hope. All else is fire. _

“Maybe it’s better this way.”

One of her brows raised at his words, and he saw pride and this assuredness cross her expression, thinking he was admitting she was right and pleased of it. He shook his head- she wasn’t understanding what he meant. 

“Maybe we all deserve to die. Maybe we don’t deserve the world,” he finished, and her lip curled.

He walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually love Curie but she is steel, and I will not minimize her status as a harlequin just because I think she's neat.
> 
> Short chapter so maybe I'll post another tomorrow!

**Author's Note:**

> comments keep food on the table (no they don't, my day job does that)


End file.
